IN BRIEF | Virgin Australia will provide Qantas' most VIP frequent flyers with free access to its airport lounges.

On top of adding extra flights and offering discounted fares to stranded Qantas passengers, the airline is cleverly targetting the cream of Qantas' corporate travel crop – members of the exclusive Qantas Chairman's Lounge as well as those holding Platinum (and presumably newly-minted Platinum One) status in the Qantas Frequent Flyer program.

In a statement on its website, Virgin advises that "Qantas Chairman’s Club and Platinum members are welcome to make use of the Virgin Australia lounge when flying with us from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth domestic airports. This invitation extends until Thursday 3 November 2011."

This looks like being another successful attempt by Virgin to tap Qantas' motherlode of business travellers and frequent flyers, following September's aggressive and highly popular status match deal which saw Qantas frequent flyers receive equivalent status in Virgin's competing Velocity Rewards program.

At least that'll make it much easier to upgrade compared to Melbourne and Brisbane, both of which they had to close for many months while work took place. With Sydney they could conceivably renovate the upper level, open this to travellers and then shut down the lower level for renovations.